Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it. Indeed, the lust for dominion is so unseemly that few of us would openly admit to a craving for clout.

Hence, it might surprise you to learn that one of the world’s most distinguished management thinkers has recently produced a detailed manual for the power-hungry.

It often seems that the mendacious and egotistical have a particular talent for accumulating (and abusing) power—and at some point, most of us have probably been out-maneuvered by a more adept political infighter.

But in Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don’t, Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, gives nice guys and gals the tools they need to even the odds, by summarizing more than 30 years of research and teaching on how to get ahead.

Pfeffer’s argument is disarmingly simple: It takes power to get things done. Without power, you’re impotent—irrespective of your talents or the righteousness of your cause…

In my last post with Polly Labarre, I noted that few teenagers dream of growing up to be a manager. Prosaic it may be, but management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, encompassing the tools and methods we use to mobilize and organize resources to productive ends. It is, quite simply, thetechnology of human accomplishment. Our capacity to improve the state of the world is ultimately bounded by our capacity to manage. So a couple of years ago I asked a small band of management thinkers to put their heads together—what could be done to multiply the impact of these would-be management renegades?

Have you ever met a 10-year-old who dreams of growing up to be a manager? Neither have I. Chances are, though, if you’re reading this post you are one—a manager, not a 10-year-old. Somewhere along the highway of life you missed a turnoff—you sailed right by the exit for “smoke jumper,” never saw the sign for “ocean explorer,” and somehow forgot to put “fighter pilot” into your career GPS. So now you’re a manager.

To mask the regret of the road not taken, you tell yourself you’re a leader. Yet all too often, you find your inner Joan of Arc assailed by the guardians of the status quo, your inner Patton ensnarled in bureaucratic barbed wire and your inner Shackleton trapped in an ice jam of cynicism and indifference.

If you were compiling a list of the world’s most innovative companies, which businesses would top your list? No one would be surprised if you picked Google, Apple or Amazon, but what about Wal-Mart? (Huh?) Or PG&E (a utility, for crying out loud)? Surely there must be some mistake! Or how ‘bout the Chinese data equipment maker Huawei (umm, who are they)? While a few of these companies might not have made it onto your top 10 list, all of them were featured in Fast Company’s 2010 ranking of innovation all-stars.

I’m a capitalist by conviction and profession. I believe the best economic system is one that rewards entrepreneurship and risk-taking, maximizes customer choice, uses markets to allocate scarce resources and minimizes the regulatory burden on business. If there’s a better recipe for creating prosperity I haven’t seen it.

So why do fewer than four out of ten consumers in the developed world believe that large corporations make a “somewhat” or “generally” positive contribution to society?

A couple of weeks back I provided you with a synopsis of Vineet Nayar’s new book, “Employees First, Customers Second,” which has been recently published by Harvard Business School Press. In it, Vineet, CEO of HCL Technologies, talks about the progress his company has made in making managers more accountable to those on the front lines. Having posted my summary, I invited you to submit your questions to Vineet, and many of you did, along with plenty of piquant comments. Herewith, Vineet’s reply. He begins by providing a bit of context, and then takes on a few of the most-asked queries.

Bold innovations often take time. That’s why progress must be judged both in relation to the starting point as well as the final destination. For example, in America’s space program, the first successful docking of two orbiting spacecraft, the Gemini VIII capsule and the unmanned Agena target vehicle, took place on March 16, 1966. While this was an important milestone, it was still just an intermediate step in the long journey to land a human being on the moon. While the commander of Gemini VIII, Neil Armstrong, would ultimately walk on the moon, that wouldn’t happen until 1969.

In my experience, fundamental management innovation is also a multi-stage, multi-year process.

How’d you like to put a question to one of the world’s most inspired management innovators—a CEO who’s challenged a host of management orthodoxies. At the end of this post, I’ll explain how you can do just that.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I believe that many of the tools and methods we use to manage people at work are ill-suited to the challenges of succeeding in today’s “creative economy.” All too often, legacy management practices reflexively perpetuate the past—by over-weighting the views of long-tenured executives, by valuing conformance more highly than creativity and by turning tired industry nostrums into sacred truths.

In my previous post, I introduced you to Drew Williams. For seven years Drew served as assistant vicar at St. Andrews, an Anglican parish in Chorleywood, England. When he arrived in 2003, Drew found a church that was big but not growing, and a congregation that was loyal but not energized. Mark Stibbe, head vicar at St. Andrews, challenged Drew to develop a plan that would change this.

On a blustery November night, just a few short months after taking up his post, Drew stood in front of a nearly-full church and presented his strategy. Those hoping for a grand vision were disappointed. Instead, Drew pointed back to the early church. In the first few centuries after Christ, the church had been organized around small, local communities. Drew noted that those early believers had typically met in the biggest house they could find, and when they ran out of room, would subdivide and form a new community.

Drew admitted he didn’t have a precise plan for how to put his idea into practice, but he asked everyone present to think about the kind of difference they thought they could make if they were part of a more intimate community. He challenged his parishioners: What’s your passion? What service-oriented program would you want to start or join if you had the chance?

At the end of his talk, Drew announced that he’d hold a follow-up session a month hence, on December 6. He invited anyone who thought they might be willing to lead an “MSC” – or “mission-shaped community” — team to come along. In his heart, Drew was hoping 12 volunteer leaders would show up, and four weeks later, that’s exactly the number that did.

In a pair of recent posts (Part I, Part II) I argued that many of us have lost our faith in large institutions. We increasingly feel ill-used by our employers and ill-served by our elected representatives. More troubling still, many of us have also lost faith in faith-based organizations. In this regard, the Church of England (CoE) stands as Exhibit A. Founded 476 years ago when King Henry VIII broke with papal authority, the Church of England has in recent years been fractured by a contentious dispute over the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy. As thorny as that issue may be, it is not the most vexing problem facing the “mother church” of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Today, less than 3% of the British population attends a Church of England service in a typical month—this according to a recent CoE report. That’s down by nearly 50% from 1968. A survey by Tearfund, a Christian charity, found that a third of Britain’s population is now “de-churched.” These are former parishioners who no longer attend weekly services. The fact that more than 50% of UK residents still describe themselves as Christians makes the decline of Britain’s “established” church all the more perplexing. As one website put it, “If the Church of England was the national football team, we would have sacked the manager long ago.”

The fact is, the Church of England has become irrelevant to most British citizens. At this point I should declare a personal interest. During the ten years I lived in the UK, I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic. After all, the only thing the vicar seemed to want from me was a kind heart and a generous hand. Like the other congregants, I was asked to donate time and money to the church’s programs—and that was it. None of the clergy seemed eager for me, or others, to actually take the initiative and start something. I was never challenged to lead—only to “serve.” If it sounds like I’m justifying my indolence, I am—but it’s hard to get excited when there’s little scope for initiative, or when the categories of contribution have already been defined by others. Though inclined to faith, I struggled to find my niche in a top-down, pulpit-led model of “church”—and still do. In this regard I’m not alone—well, not if the experience of Drew Williams is anything to go by.

About Gary Hamel's Management 2.0

Gary Hamel is a management author and consultant. His books include “Leading the Revolution,” “Competing for the Future,” and “The Future of Management.” He’s a visiting professor at London Business School and director of the Management Lab.